“Whiskey vs. Lager Beer— Bejabers”: The Irish, the Bête Noire of Lincoln’s Republican Party

Abstract

“Whiskey vs. Lager Beer— Bejabers”: The Irish, the Bête Noire of Lincoln’s Republican Party Greg Koos (bio) following william v. shannon’s oft-quoted dictum that “the Irish were a rural people in Ireland, and they became a city people in the United States,” much attention is given to large urban centers, with the assumption that such places do indeed typify the Irish American experience.1 The work supporting this truism usually focuses on the East Coast. Kevin Kenny broadened these observations: “the Irish in the United States shared a marked preference for towns and cities. . . . Fully 44.5% of the Irish-born population lived in the fifty largest cities in the United States in 1870, and well over half the remainder lived in small towns, mining villages. . . . Combining the population of these smaller industrial and urban areas with that of large cities . . . three-quarters of the American-born Irish lived in industrial areas in 1870.”2 That “well over half the remainder lived in small towns, mining villages [etc.]” strongly suggests that studies of these places should be undertaken. Such work should examine not only smaller industrial areas but also rural areas, including midwestern Irish settlement. For it is also known that 50 percent of people who emigrated to the United States before 1860 landed at New Orleans and spread through the Mississippi River valley. These immigrants were largely Irish and German.3 [End Page 123] This study examines the experiences of Irish immigrants in Bloomington, Illinois, a railroad and agricultural center whose population had reached seven thousand by 1860.4 It recounts their arrival in the 1850s as common laborers working to construct the Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR) line, which ran north and south through the state, and the Chicago & Mississippi Railroad (C&MRR) line, which connected Chicago to St. Louis. Because the C&MRR shops were in Bloomington, and because many other local economic opportunities arose there, hundreds of these workers remained in the area. As new residents they helped start a Catholic parish, enjoyed the conviviality of saloons, and participated in the community’s political life. In politics, following a long-term association, the Irish joined with the Democratic Party.5 However, they also joined the Democratic Party in reaction to the virulent hate directed toward their religion and their ethnicity by Know-Nothing nativists in the mid-1850s. Nativism arose in the East, largely driven by evangelical Protestants who bitterly opposed the Catholic faith. With the mass migration of Irish into the United States, these elements saw a major threat to democracy, which, in their view, was based upon Protestant tenets.6 Political opposition to the Irish in the Midwest resulted in election-day riots in St. Louis in 1852 and 1854 as well as election riots in Cincinnati in 1855. Opposition to immigrants was further underscored by evangelical Protestants’ drive to ban the consumption of beer, wine, and spirits, the argument being that these intoxicating beverages interfered with the rightful rise of honest workmen. Both Irish and German people rejected prohibition, leading to conflicts such as the German-led 1855 lager riots in Chicago.7 In the later 1850s the Republican Party continued that virulent nativist stance. The Catholic Church’s open support for slavery, coupled with defensiveness inspired by evangelical Protestant opposition to the Irish, provided the grounds for many Irish to openly oppose abolitionism.8 Ian Delahanty summarized the issue thus: “Historians are far from unanimous . . . in explaining why Irish Americans were so singularly hostile to all shades of antislavery. [End Page 124] Immigrants’ fears of labor competition from freed slaves, their purported need to establish a white racial identity, their attachment to the proslavery Democratic Party, and their receptiveness to the influence of a proslavery American Catholic hierarchy have all weighed heavily in the discussion.”9 From this stance came racist views and violence directed toward African Americans. The Irish became deeply embroiled in the widespread turmoil involving nativism, antislavery movements, and an emerging national civil war. A strong wish to be identified as Americans underscored Irish immigrants’ enthusiastic participation in civic life. When war broke out members of the Irish community stepped forward to serve as Americans.10...